


Transient Bodies

by KannaOphelia



Category: Shoujo Kakumei Utena | Revolutionary Girl Utena
Genre: Adolescence of Utena, F/F, Femslash, Post-Canon, Shōjo Kakumei Utena Aduresensu Mokushiroku
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-03-31
Updated: 2012-03-31
Packaged: 2017-11-02 19:31:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,149
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/372573
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KannaOphelia/pseuds/KannaOphelia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Once, there was a witch who desired to be a princess, and her desire was so strong that she created her own prince to rule her fairytale kingdom. After the princess fled her kingdom and her fairytale, there remained another prince trapped in there, a prince whose princess had been lost. All of this prince's desire was for the miracle that would return her princess to her, and to be allowed to serve and protect her always. </p><p>But is the granting of miracles always a good thing?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Transient Bodies

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Hafl](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hafl/gifts).



13.

Juri worked methodologically through her preparation work, her desk and chair turned so that her back was turned fully toward the wardrobe in the corner of her room. Despite her best efforts, or perhaps because of them, she was aware of its presence, looming behind her. When she had been a child, she had sometimes pulled the covers over her head, unable to look at her closely because, in the dark, there was no way of telling what lurked inside its shadows.

It was far worse when she knew what was in there.

The chairs in her room were stacked with clean clothes, neatly folded. There was absolutely no reason to open the closet doors.

At night, she lay in bed, hands folded behind her bed, and watched the wardrobe until she fell asleep.

12.

It seemed impossible, or at least unlikely, that life continued on in its old familiar rhythms, yet somehow it did. Juri had thought that there would have been some fundamental change in the world, that the routines of Ohtori would fall to ruins in the wake of revolution, but the inertia of the school and the lives within it carried it forward, the disappearance of four girl students only a slight road bump. Juri attended classes and studied in the evening, trained the fencing club and participated in demonstration matches. If she was a little sharper with some of fencing club, particularly the girls who called her Prince and clustered around her, that was not a significant change, after all. She had never been known for her sweet and open manner.

If there was an aching, desperate emptiness, if the absence of one girl in particular had created a hole, then it existed only inside Juri, and did not matter much to Ohtori.

She had considered not attending the next meeting of the Student Council. It seemed purposeless, after all, now that the duels had stopped and End of the World no longer wrote to them, and surely neither Miki nor Saiyonji would bother to turn up. She intended not to attend right up until the moment she collected her notes and went to the platform on which the headmaster’s sister had tended the roses that hid her brother’s body, and where the boys waited.

Miki conscientiously brought some issues that the student body had raised. Juri dealt with them mechanically, while Saiyonji leaned indolently back in his chair, dragging his hand through the drowned remains of Anthy’s beloved roses. 

Juri couldn’t tell what Saiyonji was thinking or feeling, which was an odd sensation. It was something she had relied on without realising she was doing so, that it was all too easy to tell exactly what went though Saiyonji’s beautiful, empty head at any time, and equally easy to discount his thoughts. He dramatised his emotions until there was no point taking them seriously. Now, looking at his half-closed eyes and immobile face, Juri caught herself wanting to know what lay behind his lashes. It was an odd sensation, and left her feeling strangely adrift. But then, she was already drifting.

The second Student Council meeting after Utena left the school, Wakaba turned up. She was breathless, excited and giggling, explaining that she had been voted as representative of her class because – well – there was a vacancy on the Student Council, wasn’t there? The headmaster’s sister… Wakaba blushed violently, hanging her head, as if she had done wrong in almost speaking of what they had been through together. They never did speak of it, come to that. In any case, her class had voted that she represent them. She glowed with pride.

None of the three would have questioned Wakaba’s presence in any case. They never discussed what had happened the night the headmaster’s sister fled the school and ended the duels, but they knew she had earned her place among them. 

Juri just wasn’t sure that a place among them was something to which to aspire.

“Wakaba doesn’t wear the rose seal,” she said to Miki, as they took a moment alone at the fencing club, letting the less skilled practice among themselves. One of the girls’ foils sprung from her loose grip and clattered on the ground. Her high-pitched laughter rang out, and Juri knew she should reprove her for her lack of attention, but somehow could not summon the energy to snuff out the girl’s cheerfulness. “There is no Rose Bride left to fight for, in any case. So why?”

“Friendship,” Miki said. His face was bright and young and sweet in the sparkling sunshine, catching the sunlight as brilliantly as he white uniforms and polished steel. “Friendship saves the day.” He really seemed to believe it.

The words seemed familiar to Juri, but she wasn’t quite sure why. She just knew that, with Miki and Saiyonji and Wakaba around her, the pain gnawing at her dulled just a bit. But salvation? Who had Juri saved? Not herself, and not Shiori.

There was no salvation, and no miracles. Just a closet in her room, with closed doors.

11\. 

No one had spoken to her as she gathered up the pieces from the road. She’d taken off her jacket, and dumped the scrap metal in it, careless of the dirt and oil staining the white fabric. The flames had long burned themselves out, but her fingers still blistered with the heat. She ignored it. She did not really know what she was achieving, only that it was impossible to leave the wreck there in the darkness. She could do this much for Shiori, at least.

Miki and Saiyonji stood silently beside her, not tactless enough to either help nor remonstrate, while Wakaba’s motor purred softly in the background. The silence was not approval, but it was not interference, and in a strange, negative way, it was support. It was necessary to be grateful for any support at all, however negative, when you gathered up the pieces of your broken secret dreams.

At least, all along the black road, there had been no crumpled license plate marked Kozue. Some part of Juri, under the blinding pain, was grateful that Miki’s eyes had not been darkened as well.

10.

It was becoming a habit of Miki’s to turn up in Juri’s room of an evening. Sometimes he would bring his work, carefully moving a pile of clothes from a chair so he could sit and balance his books on his knees. He never asked Juri why she didn’t keep her clothes in the closet like everyone else. Other times, he would lounge around and chat a little. Juri, whose life had become rather silent.

She did wonder a little, though. It had been assumed that, without Kozue around to scare them off, Miki would have quickly found some pretty, sympathetic girl to spend his time with, and his mild friendliness would blossom into popularity. Instead, he seemed content to spend his time being more or less ignored by Juri. She regretted a little having played at flirting with and pursuing him, in case he should have taken in seriously, but there didn’t seem anything romantic in his new clinginess.

Sometimes Saiyonji came, too, grandiose and expecting her to be thrilled by the bestowal of his company, holding forth on all manner of subjects. Juri surprised herself by how much brighter the room seemed with him there. She had always told herself that she found him annoying and impossible. And later, shyly at first, then more confidently, Wakaba began to attend the little group, treating her upperclassmen with almost awed-filled respect but joking and giggling with Miki. Watching the two of them, Juri was painfully surprised at how young they seemed. Somehow, she had never really thought of Miki as a child, not with Kozue’s brooding shadow behind him. But he was so young, so very young, and Wakaba only a little older, and their eyes were unshadowed.

After a while, Juri found herself laughing, just once or twice. She stopped herself with something like anger, her hand tugging at her locket. To laugh, when… It was unthinkable.

9.

“We can’t remain at school forever,” Saiyonji said,or rather, announced, one day. He scrutinised his reflection critically in the mirror above Juri’s vanity table.

Miki nodded in agreement. “Not much longer. The seconds run by, and then –“ He snapped his finger down, in a gesture that was familiar somehow but still strange, as if he held something invisible in his hand. “Some day, we grow up.” He looked very young.

“Then why are we still here? I thought… I thought when they left, that we would follow. Or that Ohtori would crumble into ruins, somehow. But nothing has changed.”

The boys looked at each other, oddly uncomfortable, as if they both understand something she did not. Wakaba looked down and bit her lip.

“I notice that you’re still wearing your locket,” Miki said at last.

“You still have your sister’s picture on your desk, Mickey,” Juri said. She couldn’t understand why she responded as if merely nettled, when his words had sent pain lancing through her. She felt, bleakly and unmistakably, that giving up the locket would kill her, but it seemed impossibly melodramatic to say so, and what came out of her mouth sounded like sibling bickering.

“I keep nothing that belonged to Himemiya Anthy,” Saiyonji said. “Perhaps it is because I know it’s my fate to find her in the outside world. And there, I will claim her as my own.”

“Perhaps Tenjou will have something to say about that,” Juri said, still taking refuge in pettiness.

Saiyonji dragged a hand through his beautiful mane of hair. “At least I shall have tried.”

Wakaba swung her legs. “I thought about that, myself. Finding her Tenjou Utena, I mean. I thought she needed a friend. But I think - I think Utena needs who needs her most. And that’s not me.”

“She needed you back then,” Juri said, aware of the stiltedness of her words, and the impossibility of saying what she wanted to say, approaching Wakaba’s pain, without it being stilted. They had never before discussed what had happened that evening, and where the others had gone.

Wakaba smiled, brightly and opaquely. “That’s true.”

Juri thought, for a moment, of saying that she needed Wakaba - that she needed all of them - but it wasn’t really the kind of thing she could say, and really, the conversation was both dangerous and awkward enough already.

Saiyonji began to talk about kendo, and the conversation dropped.

8.

A few days later, Saiyonji was not present at the Student Council meeting, and enquiry established that he had not attended any of his classes.

“I never thought it, but he was the bravest of us all,” Miki said.

Juri snorted. “Braveness and stupidity are not far apart.”

She wasn’t sure how far she meant it. But she was surprised at the overwhelming feeling of loss. She had thought she had lost so much that there was no more to be taken from her.

That night, for the first time, she cried into her pillow, deep, racking sobs. When she awoke, her head aching with too much weeping and not enough sleep, it took a while for her sleep-blurred eyes to take in the vase of deep golden-orange roses on her bedside table. She reached out to inspect them, but there was no message. End of the World was silenced.

7\. 

She was sitting at her desk again, trying to do her preparation for her mathematics class. The scent of the roses hung in the air, sweet and clean, and through it she could smell the scent of her own shampoo. She was wrapped in a bathrobe, hair wet, skin warm and clean, having showered after fencing and not bothered to dress.

The mingling fragrances of roses and shampoo reminded her of Shiori’s hair, always so shining and soft. She had used a shampoo perfumed with flowers and fruit, while Juri used a strictly utilitarian blend. Shiori was always so perfectly groomed, her hands soft with lotion, her uniform crisp and fresh, her stockings pure white. 

Juri crossed to the closet, flung the doors open wide, and stared at the contents. They were half wrapped in clothes still, and the grease and the dirt from the bitumen, the ashes from the fire, made them filthy. Shiori… Demure, feminine Shiori had been unable to bear a spot on her blouse, a chip of her manicured fingernails. Sick guilt welled up in Juri’s throat.

She crossed to the bathroom and turned the water on, so hot that steam billowed into the room, and poured soap into the stream until the bubbles exploded in the air, glimmering with tiny rainbows like oil spilled on a racetrack. Then she gathered up the pathetic metal fragments from her closet and bundled them into the water, sinking down by the bath and burying her face on her knees and shaking with grief.

When the tears eased a little, she snapped open the locket and stared. The old ritual, pain and guilt all wrapped up with longing. But she felt nothing this time - she looked at Shiori’s face and all she could see were the filth-encrusted remnants of a burnt car. Twisted. She yanked the locket from around her neck until the clasp broke, and without looking, pushed it behind her into the foaming water.

“So my prince keeps her vow, and rides to my rescue once again.” The voice was soft as a kitten’s, and incredibly familiar.

Juri turned and stared, unable to form words or even thoughts.

Shiori opened the locket, looking at her own picture for a long moment. “So the rumours were right,” she said eventually.

Juri abruptly realised, through her shock and her wild, unreasoning joy and a strange sense of exposure and shame at Shiori seeing the locket, that she was staring at a naked girl in a bath. Shiori was very pale among the bubbles, and there were streaks of grease along her arms, and along - 

Juri wrenched her gaze away and stared into the corner of the bathroom, face averted.

“I thought you were lost,” she said, stupidly.

“Not as long as you keep me with you. That’s the secret of this place, didn’t you know?” There was a laugh lurking somewhere in the back of Shiori’s voice, which had to be bravado. She must be so scared and confused, Juri thought, smashed to little pieces and then finding herself naked in front of a girl who - shamed her. 

She was aware of terror, and the absurdity of her terror. Herself, Arisagawa Juri, idolised and feared in almost equal amounts by the other students, terrified by a slip of a girl. Stupid.

There was a little splashing, and, at the periphery of her vision, Juri was aware that she was scrubbing away the grease. Shiori was so pure; she had hated, always, being dirty. She should be protected from anything that would besmirch her. The shame was overwhelming. “Your - _friendship_ \- must be very true. You have my gratitude,” Shiori said, her voice timid. There was a brisk movement, and the locket was lying in Juri’s lap. “You should get the clasp fixed.”

“I’m sorry…”

Shiori did not answer. There was the gush of water, and she stood. “Will you hand me a towel? Please?” she asked shyly.

Juri stood and took a towel from the rack and held it out. Shiori did not take it. Instead she stepped forward, and Juri found herself wrapping the towel around her.

“Thank you,” Shiori said, and stepped forward, laying her head on Juri’s shoulder, her wet arms closing around Juri’s waist.

Juri stood frozen, aware of nothing but how warm Shiori’s skin was from the bath water, and how damp, and that there was nothing between them but a towel and a bathrobe that was becoming untied. She had the sudden crazy impulse to loosen Shiori’s towel so that it slid from her body and left her naked against her. She held rigid against it, hating herself. She had taken so much from Shiori already. She would not take her innocence as well.

“Thank you for everything, Juri, my prince,” Shiori said in her gentle voice, and Juri felt the tears start up again.

“I don’t know what happened,” she admitted.

“Don’t you? It’s easy.” Shiori leaned back and met her eyes. “I understand everything, now. I thought I wanted to leave, but I only wanted to stop her leaving. I thought that, without her, it would all fall apart. But I was wrong. All this exists because the princess willed it to; but your will, my Juri, must be very strong.” Shiori laughed. “The princess must have a prince; but, I suppose, a prince must also have a princess.”

Juri felt dizzy and bewildered, but the joy was welling up stronger and stronger, more strong than the confusion or shame or the remnants of her grief. It was Shiori - Shiori with her deep lovely eyes, her small fragile self, and she was back, and not going. And she had seen the locket, and she did not seem afraid, or disgusted.

Shiori pulled way at last. There was something in her eyes, an expression that seemed like disappointment, but could not have been “Could you lend me a nightgown?” she said, shyly. “I - I don’t want to sleep alone. Not tonight.”

Juri spent most the the night rigidly awake, aware of the warm form of Shiori next to her, terrified of touching her but feeling the heat for her body. When she slept at last, she woke early. Shiori had cuddled against her side in the night. 

Juri breathed in the scent of roses in Shiori’s hair, and roses filled the world.

6.

Wakaba and Miki accepted Shiori’s return silently. Juri thought she saw a brief, silent look of anxiety passed between them, but they did not question. After all, it was none of their business, children that they were.

When Juri returned from classes, the wardrobe was full of Shiori’s dresses, and the roses bloomed on the table brighter and more richly scented than ever. Juri fastened her fixed locket around her neck, and that night Shiori slept with her head in the crook of Juri’s shoulder. 

Wakaba and Miki still came in the evenings, but Shiori, although she was too polite and well-bred to say anything, obviously didn’t like their presence, and it was a relief when they left. Juri realised that Shiori didn’t like to share her attention, and fierce unrelenting happiness stayed with her through her days and nights. Sometimes, when Shiori slept, Juri dared to kiss the top of her head, butterfly-soft.

She never woke, and nothing more was said about her going back to her own room.

5.

“I came to say goodbye,” Miki said.

Juri was alone, for once - Shiori had stayed behind to talk with a teacher about some missing work. Juri had not really been listening to Miki; she had been wondering when Shiori would be finished, if she could help with the work. Now, startled out of her reverie, Juri looked blankly up at her friend.

“Why?”

Miki seemed to think about it. “I need to find her, you know. She’s my sister. Somehow I lost sight of that. And maybe, outside of here, I can be just a brother to her again.” He smiled, suddenly, lighting up the room. “I love her. Somehow, I lost that, too.”

“I’ll miss you, Mickey,” Juri said, and it was true. Somehow, through the haze that was Juri, she still felt sharp pain at the thought of losing this boy.

“Then come with me.” His angelic young face was very serious.

“I - I’ll ask Shiori if she will come -”

“Shiori can’t leave. Juri…” He reached out to her. “I’m afraid for you. So is Wakaba. Staying with the dead will kill you. These games will never bring revolution. Come with me, please…”

“Are you saying she’s dead?” The thought was ridiculous. Shiori, whose breast rose and fell with every breath, with the slight pulse throbbing in her wrist, her softness… “I know we saw the wreck. But she’s here, Miki, she’s alive, and she needs me.”

Miki looked very sad. “When you leave… I hope you will leave when you’re ready, Juri. Promise me that you’ll always remember you have friends who love you?”

He stooped and kissed her softly on the lips, just as the door opened behind him.

Juri had not known her demure little Shiori was capable of such a terrible noise of rage and grief and fear. She screamed, pushing the vase to the floor, so that shattered porcelain and stems of roses flew everywhere, and flung herself to her knees in the mess, sobbing violently, her blood flowing into the spilled water.

“You won’t abandon me. Promise - promise you will protect me,” she demanded, as Juri pulled the porcelain fragments from Shiori’s skin and bound the wounds, apologising over and over.

“I promise - I promise.”

She didn’t notice at what point Miki slipped from the room.

4.

The first challenge arrived pasted to Juri’s locker. She could not understand it at first; she stared at it dully, wondering if it was someone challenging her position as captain of the fencing club, but the rose seal was imprinted in wax. The rose seal… but different. A butterfly emblem had been added, perching on the rose.

She took it back to her room and showed Shiori. “I don’t understand. How can anyone challenge me for the Rose Bride? All that is over.”

Shiori seemed unperturbed. A soft smile played about her mouth. “Of course it’s not over. Ohtori can’t exist without a Rose Bride; that’s its secret.”

“It’s just a sick joke.” Juri crumpled the challenge in her hand and made to throw it away, but Shiori’s hand was on her wrist, urgent and painful in its tightness.

“You won’t fight for me?”

Juri looked into Shiori’s eyes, which were wide and frightened. The familiar sense of protectiveness welled up in her. “Of course I will,” she said thickly.

“Of course you will.” Shiori’s grip eased, and the fear drained out of her eyes. Her lips even curved a little. “You promised, long ago, to be my prince. And you will go on being mine.”

“Of course,” Juri said, confused and fervent. A stupid challenge - a joke. But she would fight.

3.

She didn’t really know the boy who had challenged her. A year older than her, she supposed, with skin pale with sickness and hair hanging limply. Not much of a challenge. He looked like he belonged in a hospital rather than a school. He wore a seal on his hand, but the emblem was unfamiliar, a butterfly, not a rose.

Shiori pinned the rose to Juri’s breast, smiling up at her, and Juri had to crush back hard the impulse to lean down just a little and kiss her. For luck. Then Shiori crossed to the challenger and pinned her rose to the boy’s breast. He smiled down at her, and Shiori looked up at him with limpid eyes, and Juri felt terror and fury crash over her like a wave.

The Rose Bride. The headmaster’s sister had always gone with the champion, but Anthy was - strange. Shiori was so good, and pure, her friend, she wouldn’t…

The Rose Bride always was engaged to the champion, and would do whatever they wished. But Shiori was just a girl. Just a girl. She wouldn’t…

Shiori smiled back at the challenger.

Juri wasn’t fully aware of the next few minutes. As the bells clanged in her ears, all she was aware of was that she had to finish the duel, in order to talk to Shiori. The swords clashed, and she moved in instinct, pushing hard without commanding her movements. She slashed the rose from the boy’s breast and turned to Shiori in the same moment, as the bells rang out once more.

“What would have happened if I’d lost?”

Shiori smiled at her. “But you won.”

“But if I had lost? Would you -”

“Ohtori can’t exist without a Rose Bride.” She was still smiling. “Thank you for winning, my prince.”

Juri seized her hand. She was aware that Shiori, with her shorter legs, was having to half-run to keep up with her, but she didn’t shorten her stride until the door of the bedroom had closed behind her, and pushed Shiori against the door, staring down at her face.

“Shiori, you and I… If I had lost, would you…”

The faint smile was still on Shiori’s face. “I trust you to be my prince. After all, you brought me back to life.”

Juri’s face came down, and Shiori’s tilted up, and Juri was kissing her, fiercely and hungrily. Shiori’s lips parted beneath her own, her hands crept up around the back of Juri’s neck, and somehow the unthinkable was happening and Shiori was pulling her to the bed, and all Juri could think was _mine… mine._ No one can take her from me.

When it was over, Juri held Shiori pressed tight in her arms. “You won’t leave me.”

“No. I need you,” Shiori said, and there was something reflective in her voice that gave Juri another shudder of fear. She pushed it down, sharply, wanting only the happiness, the unbelievable happiness of her shame exposed and, somehow, not shame at all, but a girl cradled against her.

“I love you,” she whispered into the rose-smelling hair. “I love you.”

Shiori kissed her neck. “I belong to you,” she said.

2.

There were other challengers. Mostly boys, but a girl or two among them. After a while, Juri stopped being outraged, became arrogant and scornful. Of course, Shiori was a prize, so pretty and sweet, but she did not belong to them. Shiori smiled on them, and then spent the night in Juri’s arms. During the day she was soft and affectionate, full of kisses and gentle little touches. She would brush Juri’s hair until the rich curls gleamed, and kiss them.

Life was a haze of love and happiness. She stopped going to classes except intermittently. The fencing club had lost half of its members along with Miki; Juri handed it gladly on to the boy she had defeated, who looked at her with sad, puzzled eyes that she couldn’t read.

She didn’t care. She had Shiori.

1.

“I can’t leave alone. I’m not brave enough. Come with me?”

Juri set aside her papers, and looked across at the one remaining Student Council member. She couldn’t remember anything leading up to Wakaba’s statement; perhaps, she thought guiltily, she had not been listening. 

“I can’t leave,” she said, shortly. “You know that.” She wanted to ask Wakaba not to go, too, suddenly feeling that losing her on top of Miki and Saiyonji would just be too much, but she knew she had no right to ask. She had not been a very good friend… lately.

“Because of the Rose Bride.” Wakaba did not really seem to be questioning her.

“Yes,” Juri said, shortly.

“Anthy left.”

“Shiori can’t. You know why.”

“Come anyway.” Wakaba’s eyes were soft and pleading. “Juri - for her sake, too. As long as you stay here, as long as you make her be the Rose Bride, she’s trapped.”

“I can’t leave her! I promised to always be her prince. And - I don’t want to leave her. I need to save her.”

“She can’t be saved! Juri, she died. It’s cruel to keep her here.”

“If you keep saying such things, I’ll never speak to you again.”

“Then I challenge you.” Wakaba took a deep breath. Her hands were shaking, but she lifted her chin.

“Don’t be ridiculous! You don’t fence…”

“I challenge you to a duel, to win the Rose Bride,” Wakaba repeated, her voice unsteady.

“I won’t!”

“Then you forfeit the Rose Bride?”

“Don’t be absurd!”

“Then, tomorrow.” Wakaba turned and walked, a small, pathetic figure, from the platform.

0.

She decided to get the duel over with quickly, cut the rose immediately from Wakaba’s breast, spare her the humiliation of drawn-out combat.

When the bells rang out in her ears for a second time, she stood stupidly, clutching her breast as the last few petals came loose in her hands.

Wakaba faced her, breathless and worried. “I won.” She didn’t sound very happy about it.

Shiori crossed to her, smiling. “Wakaba…”

“I set you free.”

Shiori’s face crumpled with fear and anger, and Juri closed her eyes against it. “Do you think you can? It’s not so easy. I’m the Rose Bride…”

“The Bride needs a prince. And I won’t. Do you understand?”

“You hate me that much…”

“No. I don’t hate you. It’s for you, Shiori, as well as for her. You need to be set free to follow your own path.” Wakaba took her ring, and flung it to the edge of the platform.

“No,”Shiori whispered, but her voice was very faint, and the wind took it, and she was gone.

Juri fell to her knees and shook with sobs. The sounds that came out of her frightened her; they were inhuman and loud, as if they were torn from deep inside.

She felt arms wind around her, and for a moment, she thought it was Shiori returned to her, but it was Wakaba’s voice in her ear. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. But it was the only way… It will be all right. It will be all right, Juri. I promise.”

“It will never be all right. What do I do now?”

“I don’t know. I’m nobody’s prince, Juri. But I think - I think we just go on.”

“Without her?”

“Oh, Juri. She was never really here…”

“I was happy,” she said.

“Were you?” Wakaba sounded very sad.

“Yes,” Juri said, fiercely, and it felt like a lie.

“Let’s go on,” Wakaba said, at last.

“I can’t…” She was aware of how pathetic she was, the prince of the school, on her knees weeping and helpless, but there were no pretenses here.

“You can. I’ll help you.” Wakaba smiled. “Maybe that’s what I needed, someone to help.”

“And me? I needed Shiori…”

“I don’t think you did. I think - I think what you need is to find out what you really need.”

“I don’t know how.”

Juri looked up into the face of the younger girl - such a non-entity, am ordinary girl - and felt awed and helpless. Wakaba smiled down at her, and kissed her lips, softly, as Miki had done in friendship, as Shiori had done in passion, and somehow something both in between and different.

“Then we revolutionize the world.”

“How?”

Wakaba smiled. “Together.”

She stood up, and extended her hand down to Juri.

Eventually, Juri took it.


End file.
